By Dennis Onyango
Mr Clean tag aside, and beyond love for the Bible, Kalonzo can easily pass as the gentleman of Kenya’s politics. But lately the Mwingi North MP is battling claims he’s ODM’s master of deceit. Is it tact or self-destruction?
Mwingi North MP Mr Kalonzo Musyoka convenes his war council on Saturday to review the health of his campaign and the possible impact of his switch of parties in ODM-Kenya.
The council, which was expecting their man to arrive from South Africa on Friday night, will also try to cast an eye on the former minister’s political future.
Sources revealed the strategists are also expected to propose to him what they think he must do to remain afloat even as four other key ODM-Kenya presidential aspirants appear to warm up to each other, whilst planning to fight for State House without Kalonzo on their side.
Sources familiar with the Kalonzo campaign reveal among the issues to be discussed is the viability of restarting and sustaining talks with the ‘other side’ – meaning the other aspirants: Mr Raila Odinga, Mr Musalia Mudavadi, Mr William Ruto, Mr Najib Balala and Mr Joe Nyagah.
Two, they will also be considering the political mileage Kalonzo may get were he to convince the registered ODM-Kenya chairman and fellow lawyer, Mr Daniel Maanzo, to hand over the party instruments to the team led by Mr Henry Kosgey and Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o.
Thirdly, the evaluation of the possible impact caused by the combination of Maanzo’s court case to forestall any ‘hostile’ takeover of the party by the Kosgey team, the label ‘defector’ Raila stuck on the labels of their man, and the picture of the budding alliance between Kalonzo and Kanu chairman Mr Uhuru Kenyatta and Dr Julia Ojiambo, the leader of Labour Party of Kenya — which Kalonzo has now joined.
Recent events in the politics of Kalonzo have been difficult to read
The spirit of the talks will be the questions: Was Kalonzo’s move strategic or political suicide? Has their candidate gained support or is he facing isolation? Do Ojiambo and Uhuru bear the promise of a winning team?
The team will also weigh the impact of such in-house matters as the feeling some of the politicians around him, mainly from Ukambani, are piling pressure on him to walk away from the Raila group in the hope that this will generate a Kalonzo-wave in their home turfs, ensuring they are elected without sweat.
The war council will be meeting against the backdrop of increasing interest on the move Kalonzo pulled, and last week’s meeting in Karen where he is said to have trashed yet another ‘formula’ which kept Raila at the helm of the movement whilst maintaining him at the second position.
Saturday’s meeting comes against the background of confused and confusing moves by the candidate they work for, many of which have left more questions than answers.
Even as political upheavals go, recent events in the politics of Kalonzo have been difficult to read. Having left the Liberal Democratic Party for Ojiambo’s party, is the Mwingi North MP and one time high-flying challenger to President Kibaki now weaker or stronger?
This week, Kalonzo called his colleagues in ODM to a breakfast meeting where they discussed a power deal, which he later disowned. Why did he convene the breakfast in the first place and why did he disown it later?
‘These are time-wasting and worrying days’
Kalonzo walked out of the meeting with his colleagues in ODM and went straight into a discussion with Kanu chairman Mr Uhuru Kenyatta — whose hold on the party is at best weak —and with Shirikisho, which is torn between supporting President Kibaki and running against him.
Kanu, too, is torn between being in the Opposition and working with the Government. And Uhuru does not has of yet have the party fully in the bag, a larger part of it is still clinging on ODM, with the help of the Ruto-led group.
After pulling all these moves, the big question still remains: Will the latest political machinations by the MP do him any good?
Answers to most of these questions cannot yet be given with certainty. But for the last one: probably not! Even within ODM-Kenya, Kalonzo’s allies are beginning to liken him to a weak but bloody-thirsty boxer swaying on his feet, throwing a sudden flurry of desperate punches — but with little sense of where he is aiming.
Even among the MP’s allies, these are time-wasting and worrying days. Nominated MP Mr Franklin Bett, a supporter of the Mwingi North MP, has asked himself questions and arrived at answers.
“What is the strength of the people Kalonzo is trying to coalesce with? With all due respect to Mama Julia (Ojiambo), she is a lightweight in the politics of Western Kenya. Look at Uhuru. He is a lightweight in Central Kenya as long as President Kibaki is running,” Bett said.
“Kalonzo should be taking every step to be in good terms with Ruto, Raila and Mudavadi. He is doing nothing in that direction. A Kalonzo candidature without Raila leads him to the Opposition. A Raila candidature without Kalonzo and the rest also sees him headed for the Opposition,” Bett added.
Kalonzo found it hard to operate in LDP
Bett, however, says he understands why Kalonzo jumped out of LDP, but maintains the Mwingi North MP has not left ODM-Kenya.
“Kalonzo wanted to be free from control by Raila. That is why he left LDP. He was seeing trouble in anything placing him with Raila. But he has not left ODM. He only moved from one room to another in the same house.”
The Nominated MP said Kalonzo found it hard to operate in LDP, which was in the hands of Prof Larry Gumbe and Mrs Mumbi Ngaru, who he says are Raila’s sympathisers.
This was despite the fact that the former chairman, Mr David Musila, is a Kalonzo supporter just like Mr Joseph Kamotho, in the final days before he left.
“Gumbe and Mumbi would not budge on anything unless it was from Raila, despite Musila being the chairman. They made life very difficult for Kalonzo,” Bett revealed.
Kilome MP Mr Mutinda Mutiso thinks Kalonzo’s move was strategic.
“Kalonzo wanted to bargain for his presidential race from a position of strength. He was not comfortable with the LDP secretariat and he chose the option of moving out,” Mutiso said.
Ngaru, on the other hand, said it was Kalonzo’s “acts of treachery”, which broke relations in LDP and caused tension to date.
Raila was not aware of Nakuru meeting
For her, the story of the trouble between Kalonzo and Raila began on the Easter Monday of 2005. Ngaru recalls that on a Wednesday in the Easter week of April 2005, she received a call from LDP supporters in the Rift Valley.
They told her Raila and Kalonzo had asked them to gather at least 70 leaders for a meeting at the Great Rift Valley Lodge in Naivasha.
According to the leaders, Raila and Kalonzo were to meet them on Saturday. A day later, the same group called and said they had been told to move the meeting to Stem Hotel in Nakuru and that Raila and Kalonzo would attend on Easter Monday.
On the Easter Monday, Mumbi got a call from Raila who asked her to a meeting at Serena. When Ngaru got to Serena, a waiter told her she had been left behind.
” I asked ‘by whom?’ and I was told Kalonzo’s group had just left for Nakuru,” she recalled. “That is when I remembered to ask Raila whether he was attending the Nakuru meeting.”
It turned out that Raila was not aware of the Nakuru meeting. Somebody had used his name to gather a crowd.
With that, Mumbi on Friday revealed , she called a contact in the meeting that was being addressed by Kalonzo, and with the speakerphone turned on, she listened from Serena to whatever transpired in Nakuru.
“That was the incident that really broke relationships in LDP,” Ngaru said.
“I remember Raila called his Personal Assistant and asked why he was not told about the Nakuru meeting. The PA said there was no such meeting. Things just moved from bad to worse from then. It was treachery of the worst kind,” she added.
Kalonzo was bitterly against LDP secretariat
Mumbi also rebutted complaints that she and other secretariat officials never listened to Kalonzo in LDP. Mumbi said Kalonzo’s team brought in their own person, former Kituyi mayor Mary Mbandi, to be their “ears and eyes at the secretariat.”
“When they wanted to know anything, they would call her, not Gumbe or myself. She would relay their instructions to the secretariat.’’
“Now, why would I take instructions from my junior? That was insubordination. We decided to let them deal with their person. If it did not work for them; they only have themselves to blame,” she said.
Kalonzo’s complaints today about ODM-Kenya secretariat sound familiar to those he left behind in LDP.
In one incident during a party retreat at the Simba Lodge, complaints about the LDP secretariat made three of Kalonzo’s allies almost set on Muhoroni MP Prof Ayiecho Olweny.
Dispute had arisen after it emerged that Mrs Mbandi had not been allocated space at the event, amid complaints that she was neither an MP nor a secretariat official.
Twice, in those early days, Kalonzo is alleged to have told Mvita MP Mr Najib Balala that he would sink the LDP boat unless he was the presidential candidate.
At that time, Kalonzo was bitterly against LDP secretariat, which he said was packed with Raila allies.
Questions about MP’s capacity to plot an action
When he sent one of his allies to be one of the coordinators during LDP grassroots elections, the ally was rejected on ground that he was an official of ROAP, a party that was emerging in Ukambani and has since been registered.
Out maneuvered at LDP, Kalonzo moved to ODM-Kenya with the rest. Initially, he made the creation of independent Nominations and Elections Board a condition for him to return his nomination papers.
When the board got in place, chaired by former High Court judge Justice Richard Otieno Kwach, Kalonzo shifted demands again, and turned his guns on the secretariat, demanding the sacking of Nyong’o and Kosgey.
Claims that Raila’s people took over LDP secretariat and outmaneuvered him again in ODM-Kenya secretariat has led to questions about the Mwingi North MP’s capacity to plot an action that determines a political course.
Is he weak? Is he too trusting or simply lacking the connections a politician needs to wade through Kenya’s murky politics? The greatest political move Kalonzo pulled has created more questions than answers.
Mutiso thinks Kalonzo is a believer in playing by the rules and has respect for institutions of organisations. “It is a divide between those who want to play by the rules and those who don’t. The ODM-Kenya secretariat was clearly positioned to favour one person,” Mutiso said.
‘Kalonzo loses out because of poor public relations’
To Mumbi, the LDP secretary general who confesses that she has no time for Kalonzo, the Mwingi North MP loses out because of poor public relations.
“Kalonzo has very poor public relations. It is a question of how you approach people. Kalonzo has this tendency of wanting people to feel small before him. That is a complete contrast with Raila’s approach,” Mumbi said.
“Raila looks at ‘who is in charge here’ and plans how to work with that person for his own good. Kalonzo looks at your station in life. He sees me as a mere former councillor and mayor. I will not be very far from the truth if I say Kalonzo thinks Balala is a mere former mayor and that it is the cause of the tension between them. He has a way of turning everyone against him,” she added.
But Kalonzo could count on the dictum: a minute in politics is a long time, and secondly, there are no permanent enemies in politics, just interests. On the second tier he could, as his supporters argue, also seek solace in the fact that he has a clean past, is religious and imbued with a higher sense of ‘acceptability’ across the country.
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